WarcraftPets Forum

So, this week's quest was beat 5 people in a PvP pet battle. I was completely new to this, and so I sorta went headfirst into it. I'm gonna share the things I learned, a few tips to give out, and I'm also asking/opening this up to advice as well. There are probably lots of collectors/levelers/PvE-ers here that either have only just started, or are starting back up again.

First off, I'd steer clear of most humanoid pets. Undead pets are everywhere, and your humanoid is mostly likely to be demolished. That said, S/S Fiendish Imps are a real pain to deal with, and they're pretty useful. Anubisath Idol is also worth having (especially for PvE) but can be useful in certain situations.

Teroclaw Hatchlings are relatively easy to obtain, and they're incredibly useful if you run 2,2,2. The survivability factor on these is really amazing.

Unborn Val'kyr are everywhere for a reason, they're dead useful Most undead with Haunt are going to be everywhere, so I'd suggest investing in a few. Curse of doom is also decent, that said I do find that the enemy pet dies before it goes off. Mostly, undead pets are going to be your friends in PvP

Ikky. If you know of the glory that is the Zandalari raptors from the Isle of Giants from MoP, you'll appreciate this guy. He's a flier, and does mostly the same thing. Black claw and a "crowd" attack that increases damage taken after the 2nd round. Except, with this guy you can keep fighting after that combo has finished.

Mechanicals. They're fantastic for the most part due to their racials. If you and the enemy pet are down low, you've got an extra safety net in your passive.

Dragons can be super nifty, but are also not always the best choice due to undead being everywhere. A few that are worth looking into: Nexus Whelpling for the Arcane Storm and Mana Surge combo. Emerald Proto-Whelp because of the frequency of some fliers, Emerald Bite and Emerald Presence is pretty useful.

This is just the beginning of my thoughts, but lets have a PvP conversation. Its quite fun, and it should be more accessible. I'd also suggest looking up HirusPetBattles on youtube, he's got some good teams and does PvP pet tiers.

Biscuit wrote:Good post!
Most of us here are all seasoned veterans, so it’s refreshing to hear from someone new to the scene who is actually (seems to be) enjoying themselves. I hope you stick with it! Any and all advice you may need, just ask. I’m sure one of us will be more than happy to share the wisdom with ya.

Do you have any !Must Level For PvP! pets to suggest? I've got... some 25s. I've mostly collected and done PvE...

Nice to see players complimenting the pet pvp experience.
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Speed and Breed

In that order... Breed doesnt always matter but it might be the difference if the match goes down to the final blow.
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Some kind of avoidance is nice (dodge, dive,deflect)

In my experience, when playing vs less experienced players, a stun will often make them swap ..overswapping can be a detriment to you..giving 'initiative' to your opponent too often
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An underrated pvp pet (imho) is the previously lauded fragment of anger ..it can break through decoys and hurts fliers and mech ~ with trademark undead survivability.

Best of rng to you
Tekulve

Tendresse wrote:

Biscuit wrote:Good post!
Most of us here are all seasoned veterans, so it’s refreshing to hear from someone new to the scene who is actually (seems to be) enjoying themselves. I hope you stick with it! Any and all advice you may need, just ask. I’m sure one of us will be more than happy to share the wisdom with ya.

Do you have any !Must Level For PvP! pets to suggest? I've got... some 25s. I've mostly collected and done PvE...

I can give a few decent suggestions grab a Wicked Soul or Ghastly Kid they are much better than then Valk for Haunting.
Get a Darkness Bird you can get Crows fairly easily whilst the Darmoon fair is on.
You should also snag a Rose Taipan, Vengeful Porcupette, Magma Rageling or Blazehound, s/s Alpine Foxling, Blightbreath, Iron Starlette, h/h Spirit Crab and s/s Jademist Dancer. That’s just a few useful pets there’s loads more that are all viable it’s just checking the family and movesets.

It is so great to see a newcomer to PvP who is actually enthused about it. Welcome to the queue!

On YouTube, Discodoggy and Rosqo are pretty active, CloseToZero is, but a bit sluggish and while Llennoca and Gomirath seem to be taking a break, they both have a back-catalogue of good videos. Discodoggy also has a website http://pvppetbattles.com/ with discussion.

If you are at all interested in pets, you should join the Discord at https://discord.gg/FBtGdKU for more, as well. PvP, PvE, and general chattery.

Rosqo gave you a great list of PvP pets to go for. Make sure any Wicked Soul or Rose Taipan you get is an S/S breed. You'll find that the Need for Speed is strong in PvP, which is a big change from PvE. In PvE you are so often battling tamer pets with Epic or Legendary stat budgets, so nearly all Blues are slower. When you are battling other Blues, the battle very often goes to the fastest.

A couple of non-specific pet things -

Think about your end game. This is something I picked up from Discodiggy. You want to end up with a favorable battle - like a mech vs a beast - rather than the other way around. So when you zone in, take a look at your team vs the other team and see what you would.wouldn't want to end up with. Obviously you can't control that, but it is something to keep in mind.

Be quick, but don't hurry. Using John Wooden's advice, you have time to think about your next move. Early on I would make some boneheaded decisions by going too fast. I used to think it was gamesmanship when the other guy took a long time making a move. Now I realize it's just good play.

Try to learn from losses. I never realized some things before PvP. Like critters can't be stunned or elementals ignore weather effects. Little things can make a difference.

I know I am in a minority on this, but finish the battle. Some are lost causes, but I have seen other players do dumb things or mysteriously stop playing. People get DC'd or have to deal with family aggro. Point is, you never know. And I have learned things in losses that helped me be a better player.

I've never tried PvP pet battles, but now that I'm mostly done with the Celestial Tournament, I'm tempted. What's a good guide for absolute beginners that really walks me through the process step by step? (Preferably not only via vids.)

Nachtblau, there is no process. Seriously.

There are three things you need to know about the differences:

1. When the queue pops, you get a loading screen and are transported to somewhere in the continent you queued from. You are invisible to any players or mobs there. Your opponent doesn't see your character or name, just a random NPC's figure. You are anonymous. If you like, you can consider yourself facing a Mystery Tamer who is malicious and ingenious.

2. Your first pet doesn't (necessarily) go first. This is really hard for people who do PvE to get used to. When your opponent materialises, you will size up his team, figure which pet you expect him to start with, and then choose which of your pets you want to start with. You must choose: your first pet will not march out automatically.

3. There is a timer. The yellow bar on the bottom ticks down. If you let the time run out, you will Pass. If the ime runs out when you do not have an active live pet, the game will put in your next pet for you. If you let the time run out, you will have less time next turn. You will find you have plenty of time once you get used to it, but it's common to feel pressured at the start. Don't Panic!

The best start I can recommend to anyone new is to go do 8 or 10 battles with the full expectation that you will lose. If you win, great! but what you're looking to do initially is just get used to how the mechanics work. It doesn't take long. There is no penalty for losing; you just don't chalk up a win. Your pets are fully restored after the battle.

OK, then there's the "Compose your team" part of the game. Here are three meta strats that we're all sick and tired of, but they keep being played because they work:

1. Clonedance. Put down a Cyclone and switch pets and follow it with a Rain Dance, which buffs the hit and crit chance of the cyclone. The classic Clonedance is Blighthawk + S/S Jademist Dancer, but any pets with Cyclone and Rain Dance (or nowadays, Lucky Dance) can do it. Throw a third pet in to handle whatever is left - this is a place where Emperor Crab can come in handy. Axebeak and Junglebeak with their own Noct Strike that they can buff with Rain Dance is a more offensive alternative. MPD is also certainly a viable third. Or you could pick a tanky pet like a Humanoid Idol, Sporeling Sprout, Wyrmy. I've been known to start with a Haunter and then leave it in the back line until the end.

2. Darkness. "I see only Darkness before me". sigh. There is far, far too much of this around. I got nine - count 'em - NINE Darkness teams in a row from the queue recently. It's far too easy to be so powerful. Most of this is down to the Bone Serpent, which really really needs to be nuked from orbit. Darkness birds are at least easy to knock down. Keep Darkness up, keep Bones falling, Nocturnal Strike at every opportunity.

3. Haunt and Stall. Drop a Haunt on a pet, and stall while it ticks down. S/S Wicked Soul is the fashionable Haunter at the moment because of its speed, but the Kid and the Valk both work just fine as well. Anything fast with a Dodge works for stalling - Teroclaw Hatchling is ideal because of its heal, but a fast rabbit works great as well. You could make a beautiful example team: Ghastly Kid, S/S Fiendish Imp, Teroclaw. Start with the Kid. Dodge the first round if you expect your opponent to switch you out with an Imp, or Deflect with an Idol; otherwise Haunt. Bring in your Imp. Get your Immolation up and do a little damage until you lose 400-500 health, then Nether Gate your opponent out to be Haunted in the backline, then bring in the Teroclaw to Dodge and Heal while the Haunt ticks down, and the Imp heals from the Humanoid racial ticks on the backline. Darkness might shut you down, but it's a neat out-of-the-box strat for a lot of teams.

Or you might be more comfortable playing pets that you're familiar with. That's fine, at least to start. Just be aware that PvP is more about being tricky than PvE is. You will face more dodges, stuns, traps and weather effects in a day than you have seen in the whole of your PvE career.

Discodoggy's older entries and Guides on http://pvppetbattles.com/ are still excellent for reading, but videos have become the main language of PvP. I really do suggest watching at least a couple to prepare yourself. But after that, the only way to get into it is to play, see what other people are playing, figure out why they beat you, and learn to do it to them next time!

Blizzard can keep the meta pvp as the majority of customers like it, it requires little skill and in a few days you are old hat meta, nothing to it. it is mainly rote action with that tiny amount of pets.

What we need is some real skill competition, that is random pets chosen for two players to battle. No meta, no clue as to what you will use and the randomness of your pet pool, your entire pool, wherever you think you can hide them to put odds in your favor will be used, no trying to fudge. Caged pets on alts and in your bank would be used also to prevent slimming down your pool to try and gain an edge, which many would try.

Random pet fights require skill and knowledge, not the total op of meta builds. Thing is, most "hardened" PVP folks are afraid of endorsing this mode because of the loss of meta.

Still, we need this mode as it would not only bring in newer folks but force the old hats to think a little bit rather than grin wildly and use the same 4 squads over and over and over.

First of all, the majority of customers clearly don't like the meta as it is. If any significant number of people liked it, we wouldn't be waiting around for minutes (to hours, sometimes!) hoping someone else would join. There are only a few dedicated PvP players, and there's no mystery about why.

If the pet pool you were randomly assigned was purely from your own roster, at least some people would immediately delete everything except a few Bone Serpents, Teroclaws, Imps, BAs, whatever was the new meta. Cages could be handled by asking friends to hold them, or deletion and Item Restoration once a month, if they even bothered. Don't ask me why they would do this, but some would.

I certainly wouldn't delete pets, but I would never enter the queue again. Not that I do much now, but that would be the ultimate turn-off. Choosing and slotting your pets is as much a part of the game as choosing moves.

As I've said before, and say again now, forcing us to choose from changing subsets of pets for PvP would keep the meta fresh. Today, you can only queue with pets beginning with the letter "M". Tomorrow, it's wild-caught pets from Outland. Next day, you can't slot any ability from the same family as the pet. We need to get away from the Dirty Dozen, sure, but we still need to own our choices.

I love that people think a random selection of pets would suddenly put them on the same playing field as good pet battlers. It just wouldn’t work just instead massively increasing rng where the occasional match up would be in one persons favour.

In all honesty the players getting beaten by the strongest pets are running garbage like Idols, One of those manafiends and Zandalari raptors.

There are some pets that are a lot better than others but it isn’t the massive issue that people make out. The truth is you need to get better at the game not make the game easier for you.

There’s quite a lot of players saying random pets promote skill on behalf of the player occasionally it will if by chance it will if the teams are matched but often they won’t be. Then there will be cries of bad rng because I never get decent random teams.

Ultimately the best players will still win more often than not unless really bad rng.

TLDR: this is an idea that bad players believe will increase their chances of winning.

I don't think anybody believes they would magically become better in a random system. It's just too unrealistic. Anyone who wants to play with Tier-1 PvP pets already can, by spending just a few K at the AH - it's not like there is any skill or effort involved in getting them.

Much more than twice. We need something to build up the active population in the first place. Moar rewards! Moar forcing away from the top pets!

I'd like to see a "3 random pets, have fun with that" on 2 major conditions. 1, all the pets must be the same level, and 2, all 6 pets must be the same quality.

But, it would be a "For fun and weird stuff." Sorta like how Magic the Gathering has a fun/weird expansion.

Random pets just won’t be based on skill it will be based on luck. It will be pulling the worse part of Family Brawler, hard counter match ups into the queue once more. This is something that casual players cannot appreciate but you’re loosing a lot because your not as good as other players the majority of the time unless you run the best of the best teams.

I’m hoping for pet balancing so that the games are much more dependant on skill not rng.

My most successful team is:

[url]https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/elemental/elementals/magma-rageling/[/url] (1,2,2)
[url]https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/elemental/elementals/fel-flame/[/url] (H/S 1,2,1)
[url]https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/elemental/miscellaneous/blazehound/[/url] (2,2,2)

Basically a trap team with the amazing fire-shield ability

While I think its possible to come up with fun teams while a strong meta exists, I think the current rewards almost actively encourage boring play and long que's. The PvP weekly gives no rewards a couple minutes of PvE pet battling wouldn't give, and the achievement (rewarding wins, not games played, and an absurd amount of them for the 5k achieve) means that if a team gives you a .85 win rate vs a less meta team with a .75 win rate, you'd pick the meta, because it'd mean 800 matches less to play to get 5k wins. At 3 minutes per game, that's 40 hours played, without taking Q time into account. That's insane!

Forcing people to change it up with restricted battles is a neat way to mix up the meta, to be sure, but a new meta would spring up for most of those conditions, or people grinding out achievements would simply start avoiding battles with 'unpredictable' matchups. I think the extra traffic and team creativity I see during week of the critter and after the release of the new pet PvP achievements proves that people want to petPvP, given additional achievements and/or rewards. I would like to see improved rewards, some in between achievements, and some measure in place that rewards(rather than enforces, or both) variable teams, and perhaps even rewarding matches played instead of won. Participation medals are probably an unpopular opinion to have, but I feel like my current options in petPvP are 'que with meta, feel bad ', and not queing at all, as there's no worthwhile reward for me outside of the 5k achievement, and not using meta could easily add weeks to any attempt to reach that point.

Anubishaman wrote:My most successful team is:

[url]https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/elemental/elementals/magma-rageling/[/url] (1,2,2)
[url]https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/elemental/elementals/fel-flame/[/url] (H/S 1,2,1)
[url]https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/elemental/miscellaneous/blazehound/[/url] (2,2,2)

Basically a trap team with the amazing fire-shield ability

Hey, thanks for the team suggestions!